EU reform

Unloved, thrice rejected

Marketing a 287-page legal document deliberately drafted to obscure its genetic origins - a twice-rejected constitution - was always going to be a Sisyphean task. The Irish government made an even bigger hash of it by blundering into the same elephant trap that France and the Netherlands tumbled into three years ago. It let the referendum on the Lisbon treaty become the hostage of general public discontent.

Only weeks before the referendum was held, Bertie Ahern, who had ruled Ireland for over a decade in a manner so impervious to scandal that he became known as the Teflon Taoiseach, fell victim to his baroque past with cash-ready businessmen. He was replaced by Brian Cowen, who had no time to organise a yes vote. It was an odd time to be asking Irish voters to trust their leaders. But yesterday's referendum was all about trust - and the Irish political elite, the French and the Dutch elites before them (and, one would suspect, the British) notably failed the test.

It mattered not that the Lisbon treaty leaves the position on tax harmonisation, neutrality or abortion unchanged. All that mattered was those businessmen wary of losing their low corporation tax, or those worried that Ireland was sleepwalking into a superstate with its own army, had a platform wide enough to accommodate ultra-rightwing Catholics, neoliberals, pragmatic Eurosceptics, traditional nationalists, and Trotskyists. Not so much a rainbow alliance as a horde of Goths at the gates of Rome.

What happens now is as clear as peat soil. The Lisbon treaty was plan B, seven years' work down the drain, or so it is tempting to think. The European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, was at pains last night to urge member states to continue ratifying the treaty, which all 27 governments had signed up to in Lisbon. Eighteen member states have already done so through their parliaments, but whether the treaty is alive, dead or on life support is open to debate. The Irish rejection was so emphatic yesterday, with 53.4% against 46.6% in favour, that Mr Cowen can hardly go back to the people and ask them to think again, as happened over the Nice treaty in 2002. Then the excuse for the wrong answer the first time round was low turnout. That trick will not work again. The alternative, as Mr Barroso suggested, is for the remaining states to forge ahead and leave Ireland to work out its own relationship with the Lisbon arrangements. This, too, is fraught with problems, as Ireland has already opted out of large chunks of the treaty, such as defence, justice and home affairs. It is not clear what more it could derogate from.

Forging ahead also has its problems: the EU designed the treaty so that it should not be put to the vote, and the one time it has, it has failed. This puts more pressure on Gordon Brown to abandon the treaty's ratification, now in the final stages of parliament, and declare an end to the EU's attempts to reform itself. David Cameron was quick to apply this pressure yesterday by demanding the prime minister make a statement to the House of Commons on Monday. The EU summit next Thursday is going to be a crisis one, although the club are past masters at muddling through.

In the longer term, however, the prospects of creating a Europe with a strong voice and distinct leadership are darker this morning than they were yesterday. Sapped of the political will to make bold reforms, an EU of 27 member states could return to a patchwork of ad hoc intergovernmental alliances. If integration by grand constitution is dead, and integration by small treaty in a rut, business will be conducted by smaller groups of countries. This is not a union that will find it easy to accept Turkey as a member, defend its common interests against Russia, or speak with one voice about the Middle East, global warming or trade. But it is the union we have now got.